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On the Map

Photo Above

San Remo Café, 1930s. Courtesy of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

History

The San Remo Café was a working-class Greenwich Village Italian restaurant and bar that operated from about 1925 to 1967. It was located on the ground floor of the tenement building at 189 Bleecker Street, corner of MacDougal Street.

The online blog The Last Bohemians indicates that by 1960 the San Remo had a mostly gay clientele, with hustlers from nearby Washington Square, and that “Andy Warhol loved the Remo, and stocked his early Factory with men he found at the bar.” In the 1960s, Edward Albee, Terrence McNally, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns were also known to have frequented the bar. It closed in 1967.

building information

Architect or Builder: John P. Voelker

Year Built: 1907

sources

Dan Foley, “The Ghosts of Greenwich Village #2: The San Remo Café,” The Last Bohemians blog, May 15, 2011, bit.ly/2gL9ksl.

Danny Fields, in “Tales From the Warhol Factory,” by Guy Trebay and Ruth La Ferla, The New York Times, November 12, 2018.